From Gerald (Gerry) Brown, Media Consultant in Hong Kong, the latest buzz on the Digital Broadcasters market in Asia-Pacific, South Asia and the Middle East covering the latest content and hardware moves in HDTV, 3G, IPTV, Mobile TV, terrestrial radio and TV, cable TV, broadband, satellite broadcast and streaming online.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Shortwave Broadcasters Seek More Spectrum Space

February 17
BROADCASTERS SEEK REGULATORS’ SUPPORT FOR ADDITIONAL SPECTRUM

Shortwave radio is alive and kicking. In fact there are not enough
frequencies to go around. Current allocation is densely utilised. To
resolve the matter some 130 frequency managers from 60 shortwave
broadcasters met in Haikou, Hainan, PRC February 14-17 to discuss
exactly how to open up the spectrum further at the 4th Global Shortwave
Co-ordination Conference in preparation for the upcoming ITU World
Radiocommunication Conference 2007 (WRC-07).

The co-ordination conference was hosted by the Radio and Television of
the People’s Republic of China (RTPRC).

Sharad Sadhu, Head of Technology Transmission and Spectrum in the Asia
Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU )said that shortwave broadcasters had
clearly demonstrated the need for additional spectrum to meet
requirements of their ongoing services that currently stand at 7350
daily transmissions and overcome current congestion in the allocated
spectrum in the 4–10 MHz band.

Interference was eliminated in 19 percent of services that were deemed
to be affected. When these channels are put to use for transmissions in
the last week of March onwards, reception quality is expected to
improve significantly.

On the sidelines of the conference, meetings of the ABU-HFC and
HFCC/ASBU Steering Committees took place where several significant
decisions on the future development of the frequency coordination were
taken. Emphasis was placed on monitoring of quality of transmissions
and elimination of ‘wooden transmissions’ – frequencies assigned but
not used. Technical experts of all the Coordination Groups also
finalised procedures for a more enhanced interference detection system.

The Global Coordination Conferences have evolved over the years after
the three coordination groups, the ABU-HFC, HFCC and ASBU decided to
work together on a worldwide scale where the objective of the annual
conferences is to produce methods and tools to resolve interference and
improve the quality of shortwave radio service. The ABU-HFC group, set
up by the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union in 1996 includes 38
broadcasters in Asia-Pacific and in Europe, Africa and North America.
The next meeting of the group will take place in Kuala Lumpur in
January 2007.